This invention relates to a multi-contact electrical connector for connecting terminal pads or areas on one panel-like member to the terminal pads on the second panel-like member. The particular embodiments disclosed herein are specifically intended to connect the terminal pads which are located along the sides of a substrate to terminal pads on a printed circuit board, however, many other applications of the principles of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art of electronic packaging and interconnections.
The wide-spread and increasing use of solid state electronic devices and the complexity of the circuits in which they are used continues to give rise to the need for new types of electrical connecting devices for forming connections between panel-like surfaces such as the terminal pads on a substrate and the terminal pads of the connectors on a printed circuit board. New problems related to such interconnections continue to arise and quite often, the available interconnection systems are incapable of performing the interconnection functions which are required. For example, a wide variety of printed circuit board connectors are available which comprise a housing or a mounting member of insulating material and individual spring contacts which are mounted in, or on, the insulating mounting member. Multi-contact connectors of this type can be scaled down from the relatively coarse sizes of pre-solid state circuitry but there is a point beyond which such scaling down of pre-existing designs becomes impractical if not impossible.
A further problem which faces the electronic art is that solid-state electronic devices are manufactured in a wide variety of configurations, terminal pad locations, terminal pad spacings, and other variables so that specialized connecting devices are frequently required for a particular electronic package. In other words, the electronic packaging art is developing in a way which does not permit the wide spread use of standard types of electrical connectors. Since the manufacturing cost of an electrical connector is directly related to the volume of production and connectors which are not manufactured in extremely high volumes tend to be high priced, the achievement of low cost connectors becomes difficult.
The instant invention is directed to the achievement of a multi-contact electrical connector for parallel spaced apart panel-like members, such as a substrate and a printed circuit board, which can be produced in relatively small sizes at a low cost and in a wide variety of specific configurations for specific packaging requirements. The invention is further directed to the achievement of a connector of small size which will provide a high contact pressure at each contact point so that, if desired, the common expedient of using gold plated contact terminal pads and terminals can be avoided.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide an improved multi-contact electrical connector. A further object is to provide a multi-contact electrical connector for forming connections between parallel spaced apart and laterally offset rows of terminal pads on two parallel panel-like members. A further object is to provide a connector of small size which can be manufactured at low cost and which will produce a relatively high contact pressure. A still further object is to provide a relatively small electrical connector for closely spaced terminal pads which can be economically manufactured and which does not require extremely close dimensional tolerances for all of its parts.